It now read: “It has been 737 days since our last vampire incursion.”

I turned back to Connor. He nodded, then gestured toward the board. I crossed through the bustling activity of cube dwellers and investigators scurrying back and forth. Against the wall was a ladder that led up to the whiteboard. I started up it, only to have someone tug on my pant leg when I was about four rungs up.

“Someone already changed it today, Simon,” a familiar voice said. I turned to see Godfrey Candella standing below me, looking the same as he had at the dock, the neat part of his black hair matching the perfect knot of his tie and his black horn-rim glasses.

“Someone already did that today,” he repeated. “The number’s already been switched.”

I smiled at him.

“I’m sure they did, God, but I don’t think they were about to do this,” I said, and continued up the ladder, my nerves tingling.

When I was twenty feet up, one by one, everyone in the room fell silent, until the only sound was that of my shoes against the rungs of the ladder. I reached the top and from the thin lip at the bottom of the whiteboard, I grabbed the eraser and ran it through the 737. A collective gasp rose from the rest of the agents. I picked up the marker and wrote a large zero in its place.

A nervous cheer from the crowd broke the silence. It felt strange, given the dark implication of it, but part of me was also beaming with pride for being the one to have discovered the first sign of vampires in Manhattan in over two years. Divisional leaders and members of the Enchancellors Board came streaming out of doors and down the stairs, genuine concern on their faces. By the time I climbed down, Inspectre Quimbley stood waiting for me at the foot of the ladder along with Godfrey and Connor.

“Are you sure, boy?” the Inspectre asked, serious as can be. “I trust you have three points of collaboration?”

I nodded. Although I had only attended the afternoon seminar “Pains in the Neck” on the subject of vampires, the one thing I remembered was that we were required to have at least three solid signs of vampirism before calling for a Department-wide warning.

“We didn’t have a direct sighting of the vampire,” I said, “but everything else seems to match up.”

“Let’s hear them, then,” the Inspectre said, his eyes widening.

Godfrey pulled out a Moleskine notebook and started writing like mad.

“The event took place at night,” I said, “so that makes it a possibly nocturnal creature. Second, the victims exhibited blood loss accompanied by the puncture wounds on their necks, but there was very little blood at the scene. Third, it was a foggy night and the woman at the docks said she had seen several dogs at the site. Animal familiars of the creature or shape-shifting into wolf form, perhaps?”

“Well,” the Inspectre said, “your last point seems a bit of a stretch, but I think we can count the blood loss and puncture wounds as two separate things, so you still have three points.”

I took a brief minute to tell him what Davidson, Connor, and I had discovered on the boat while the rest of the agents and higher-ups gathered closer. I felt like I was sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories, only this was a lot more intimidating.

When I finished, there was a moment of office-wide silence.

“So,” I said, trying to hide the nervousness in my voice, “do we gear up? Is there some roomful of vampire-slaying equipment that we get to break out?”

Connor came over and clapped me on the shoulder. “Easy, kid.”

The Inspectre said, “The Department of Extraordinary Affairs takes an alert like this very seriously, but there’s a lot of red tape and paperwork to put in downtown. We haven’t mobilized something like this in well over two years.”

“Paperwork?” I spluttered. “With all due respect, sir, people are going to die if we don’t move on this quickly.”

“The kid’s right, Inspectre,” Connor added.

The Inspectre looked at Connor for a second, then turned back to me, staring straight at me and speaking in a deliberate tone.

“Perhaps the two of us should take this off the office floor,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but an order barely veiled in politeness. Before I had a chance to respond, he turned away from me and headed back toward the stairs leading up to his office. The crowd parted before him like the Red Sea. He stopped for a moment without turning and said, “I believe you all have assignments you were working on . . . ?”

The spell of silence broke and everyone scattered to the four corners of the office—everyone except Director Wesker, who took the time to shake his head at me in disappointment before heading off to Greater & Lesser Arcana. No one stopped to ask me questions. A few of the White Stripes—the agents whose exposure to paranormal activity had left them with skunklike stripes in their hair—stopped to whisper with Connor for a second, but then they left and the two of us were alone at the base of the ladder.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” I said. “I guess we should be getting upstairs.”

Connor shook his head. “Not me, kid. The Inspectre’s invitation, in case you didn’t notice, was very pointedly for one.”

My heart leapt into my throat. “But we’re both on this case. You’ve got more experience with these things . . .”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said with bitterness. I watched his face close off from me, and I wished I had something to say that might help, but I was at a loss. “Somehow I think this has something to do with your special little club . . .”

The Fraternal Order of Goodness. I should have thought of that myself. No wonder Connor seemed upset. He was far less bitter than Thaddeus Wesker about being passed over for F.O.G., but it was a minor point of contention between us.

“Whatever,” I said, and headed upstairs to find the Inspectre. He stood behind his dark oak monster of a desk, his hands resting lightly on top of two stacks of paperwork.

“Close the door behind you, please?” he said, his voice concentrated yet quiet.

As I shut the door, I couldn’t help but get that whole summoned-to-the-principal’s-office vibe. By the time Inspectre Quimbley gestured for me to have a seat in one of the big leather chairs opposite him, I felt like a third-grader.

“I suppose you’re feeling like I dressed you down a little there,” the Inspectre said. He sat down himself and shifted one of the piles of paper crowding his desk out of the way so I could see him better.

“A little, sir, yes.”

“Perhaps you think I acted a little less enthused than you would have liked?” he asked.

“The thought had struck me.”

“I’ll let you do the mental legwork on this, son,” he said. He folded his hands on top of his desk. “Why do you think I reacted the way I did?”

Away from the crowd, I hoped a cooler head would prevail, so I set my mind to putting myself in the Inspectre’s shoes. How would I have reacted if one of my agents had just made a bold and possibly terrifying accusation that would affect every other division in the Department?

“Because . . . of the mixed company we were in?” I asked, piecing my thoughts together as they came.

The Inspectre grinned. “Continue . . .”

“Well,” I said after a slight hesitation, “there were members of every division on hand down there, including the Enchancellors. If you had blown your cool in front of all them . . . Well, I’m sure there was a lot at stake politically, all dependent on your handling of the situation.”

He nodded in agreement. “I meant what I said in front of all them, Simon. The wheels of change and progress are indeed slow around here. We will be investigating this matter, but most likely it won’t be at the pace that either of us want.”

“So we’re just supposed to sit here and wait it out while the Enchancellors send out interoffice memos and get all the right signatures lined up?”